Addendum To My Anti-Apology Post

I've received some push back on my comparing indentured servitude to the institutionalized slavery of blacks in the South. Quite right, slavery was an "institution" in the old South.

Yes, and largely in part to end that "institution," roughly 360,000 Union troops fought, bled and died to end that vile institution. Another 275,200 were wounded.

If the blood of over a half million patriotic Americans and the lives of 360,000 who never owned slaves, those who Lincoln pronounced "these honored dead," is not enough to atone for the blight of slavery on our national past; then, tell me, how is it that "mere words," to quote Barack Obama, can somehow do that?

Given the tremendous sacrifice much of this nation made in blood and treasure to ensure that our constitutional freedoms were upheld and put forth to all its citizens, of any color, it is a disgrace, no, it's a pathology to now insist on more.

This Cohen, who initiated the measure - as he is a white candidate in a predominantly black district in a tough fight against a black Democrat in the primary is simply playing politics. And like good Democrats, the whole damned party is willing to disgrace the tombs of hundreds of thousands of dead union soldiers in the hopes of winning one lousy congressional seat.

Pathetic.

Sorry? Yeah, I'm sorry. See here!

Comments

[IslamoLlama]

"-- If the blood of over a half million patriotic Americans and the lives of 360,000 who never owned slaves, those who Lincoln pronounced "these honored dead," is not enough to atone for the blight of slavery on our national past; then, tell me, how is it that "mere words," to quote Barack Obama, can somehow do that? --"

It doesn't?

There were riots in New York as mobs of would-be conscripts protested what they considered none of their business. More than a few northerners would have been more than happy to see the South secede off in a fit of petulance. Lincoln didn't mobilize the US Army to free the slaves, he fought the Civil War to preserve the nation.

Likewise, of the hundreds of thousands who died dressed in Confederate Gray, perhaps one in ten owned slaves. They died fighting to preserve an institution that they, ultimately, never even got to indulge in.

I'm sure the Congress could pass some convoluted piece of legislation dictating that all those people who did own slaves during the first 90 years of US History are having their apologizes offered by extension through the US Congress and its representatives and blah blah blah, who the fuck cares?

Ultimately, this just comes down to the same old whiny tripe. Dan's mad because the US Congress stated they disapprove of slavery. Oh no. Boo-hoo. Look how mean the big bad liberals are.

This from the man who couldn't fap hard enough over the Anti-Flag Burning Amendment.

[SacTownMan]

Dan,

The only ones that should be sorry are the pandering Democrats that continue to use blacks to advance their socialist agenda.

This is just another election year stunt, nothing more!

It's about the only thing the "worst congress in history" can accomplish these days with Happy Harry and Botox Nancy in charge.

She's got a world to save for crying out loud!

[ireckun]

Members of Congress trying to assuage the A-A community is blatantly obvious.Bill Clinton had already apologized all over himself for entire country. How many more times are politicians are going to say slavery was wrong?
We all know it was wrong,but,to keep on apologizing again and again only serves to keep the racial divide open,
not close the gap.

My question is. When are we going to hear your apology has been accepted?

Congress does not need to apologize for me,I never owned slaves.

[redherkey]

You got pushback on indentured servitude, eh? Alright... so my great grandmother was a house slave, not a field slave. The fact that young girls still had no freedom from age 9-10 to their mid-twenties, were often molested from young ages through their teen years by the "men of the house" and received no pay, long hours, physical and mental abuse and terrible quarters is indeed a step up from working in the fields.

Then again, those of us with ancestors pressed into military service and sold as a mercenary know that the experienced the field duty, were exposed to combat and extreme hardship. So the difference there from field slaves is what... they were shot at rather than whipped? They were more likely to die a sudden death? And let's not forget Jim Crow, to which Obama and other racket runners demand restitution for. It's not just slavery, but conditions of inequality. For Italians, Irish, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Eastern Europeans, etc., they experienced Jim Crow treatment for more than a generation too.

I wouldn't back off. Restitution is a racket where unworthy, lazy individuals whose only hardship is self-imposed demand theft of property earned by the hard work of others. Combined with property seizures, excessive taxation, fictional social security and every other seizure by these parasites and this bull is ready to buck.

Go ahead on that restitution bit. Just try me...

[Perri Nelson]

Barack Obama is an arrogant, racist, Marxist Ass!

For proof, I refer you to his call for reparations...

“I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.”
— Barack Obama quoted in the Star Bulletin, July 27, 2008

[seekeronos]

This whole thing is disgusting as it is a gross and immoral distortion of history.

The North didn't fight to end slavery (although that was a side effect that is welcomed).

The South did not secede from the Union merely to protect slavery (although slavery was a key part of the Southern economy at that time).

The war was over state's rights. Most Southrons were not slaveholders. And they fought not just for the sake of an institution that they were never likely to be a part of (the South was just as socially stratified as the North ever was with its WASPs).

They fought for the freedom of their nation, and for their states that left a Union no longer willing to honour the fact that the states reserved all rights not specifically allocated to the federal government nor expressly prohibited to them by the Constitution.

But to the degree that both Confederate AND Union blood was spilled with the result that the blacks were freed, I'd consider that reparations enough, plus whatever affirmative action nonsense we have had up until now.

Enough with this discussion of reparations... let the blacks pull themselves up by their bootstraps just as great role models like Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell... and many others have.

They have escaped the surly bonds of race baiting and victimhood unlike that skunk Kwame Kilpatrick from Detroit and the usual cast of idiotarians (Sharpton, Wright, Pfleger, J. Jackson, and so on).

[BMW]

Thanks for freeing us slaves with that civil war and all. No need to apologize: we are glad you fought for our freedom. No need to give us anything. Your spilled blood will suffice. Especially all those members of the fightin' Riehl family who fought so bravely during the War between the States. (I guess they all were members of the very very prematurely anti-fascist Abraham Lincoln Brigades, circa 1861.) Thank goodness you were all on our side.

(For the sarcasm-challenged, that was a joke.)

Your last post was even more idiotic than the first. Quit while you are way behind.

[SacTownMan]

(For the sarcasm-challenged, that was a joke.)

For you and your fellow trolls out there - It wasn't funny!

Ask Lame-O to share the camping joke with you.. now that's funny!

[BMW]

Great comeback, Sac-o-whatever.

This site totally blows. You guys are the pathetic ones. Is this some kind of supremacist self-esteem gathering place? Reading everything here gives me a headache.

White power! (Indeed.)

[RiseAGAIN]

I am so sick of these nigras and their complaints about slavery etc. Slavery was good for them, right? And when are they going to thank us whites for ending slavery, right? We fought and died to save their lazy asses.

If Obama wins, it is over for White America. I will move to Iceland if he does.

[Bean Counter]

"--- This site totally blows. You guys are the pathetic ones. Is this some kind of supremacist self-esteem gathering place? Reading everything here gives me a headache.---"

Then kindly move along and spare both us and you the displeasure of your headaches.

And for what it is worth, skin color isn't a factor. Reprobates and moral dwarfs come in all sizes, colors and nationalities.

My main point in bringing up the problems Negroes have with their perpetually being ensnared in race politics, race baiting and eternal victimhood applies just as well to any other identity group that milks out its guilting of the rest of us to get a few questionably deserved benefits at public cost.

[Steven Den Beste]

They really came out of the woodwork for this one, didn't they? Dan, you have my sympathy.

[bobInStamford]

So much angry talk about the ungrateful black folk! At least some of them have some sort of excuse. The lowest of the low are those born white in America and living in dirty tin boxes on wheels. And they do it for generations! What complete losers!

#3 will live forever!!! Let's Roll!!!

[joeb]

The Washington Post story on this yesterday referred to Cohen as a "white Jew". I had never seen that before in the Washington Post. What is up with that?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902279.html

[SacTownMan]

"Great comeback, Sac-o-whatever.

This site totally blows. You guys are the pathetic ones. Is this some kind of supremacist self-esteem gathering place? Reading everything here gives me a headache.

White power! (Indeed.)"

Wow! I guess he didn't want to hear the camping joke after all!

Gotta go, my sheet wearing friends are standing out in the front yard.

Honey put the grits on low I'll be back in a while.

[WAHOO WILLIE]

"Lincoln didn't mobilize the US Army to free the slaves, he fought the Civil War to preserve the nation."

Good job Pookie, VERY good job!! The only thing you left out was that slavery ended in the north no more than two generations before the south. Mass was the first colony to legalize it and Georgia the first to make it illegal. Slavery actually ended AFTER the war to end slavery, yeah only eight short months but still. Ended by radical repugnicans and a democrat president from the south. The last three slave states were Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey and pretty much only New Jersey had a meaningful transition as opposed to "you're free now, go find something to do" which sent most slaves back to the plantation and began the share cropper system. It would be nice if congress gave them their forty acres and a mule as they promised......but then I guess we could ask the natives about congress and their promises.

[WAHOO WILLIE]

"The war was over state's rights."

That's true Seeker but one of the 'rights' in question was whether the "new states" would be slave states or not. In short, the expansion rather than the existance of slavery. Lincoln didn't care about whether SC had slaves though the abolutionists were pressing him. There's no need to discuss the other reasons for secession since they were not solved and in fact centralized government became more powerful as a result.............

[seekeronos]

"--- There's no need to discuss the other reasons for secession since they were not solved and in fact centralized government became more powerful as a result ---"

Quite true.

And we can see where the Hamiltonian turn in 1865 brought us toward a unitary executive and a virtually all-powerful central gummint gets us: the Constitution ignored as "just a scrap of paper".

Methinks that those forgotten issues may one day re-emerge, and likely sooner rather than later, as people begin to awaken to their suddenly missing liberties... that's if Dr. paul and the fine folks at the Campaign for Liberty and other like minded paleoconservative groups have anything to say about it.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com

[Fred Beloit]

Moe says: "Lincoln didn't mobilize the US Army to free the slaves, he fought the Civil War to preserve the nation....Likewise, of the hundreds of thousands who died dressed in Confederate Gray, perhaps one in ten owned slaves. They died fighting to preserve an institution that they, ultimately, never even got to indulge in."

My my, how Moe must twist logic into a knot to make her "feelings" appear correct. In her statement above we learn the following:
(1) The North fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery.
It follows then, does it not, that their opponents fought to leave the Union not to preserve slavery.
No, no, not in Moe land. In Moe land
(2) The South fought to preserve slavery, not to leave the Union.

[seekeronos]

"---
May 20 (1864) - Three years ago to-day the Old North State left the Union, and we went to the front full of hopes to speedily show the Yankee Government that the South had a right to leave the Union; but to-day, how dark it looks!
---"
(DIARY OF A TAR HEEL CONFEDERATE SOLDIER: Electronic Edition by Louis Leon, ©1913, p. 64)
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/leon/leon.html

[seekeronos]

"---
Our cause is lost; our comrades who have given their lives for the independence of the South have died in vain; that is, the cause for which they gave their lives is lost, but they positively did not give their lives in vain. They gave it for a most righteous cause, even if the Cause was lost. Those that remain to see the end for which they fought - what have we left? Our sufferings and privations would be nothing had the end been otherwise, for we have suffered hunger, been without sufficient clothing, barefooted, lousy, and have suffered more than any one can believe, except soldiers of the Southern Confederacy. And the end of all is a desolated home to go to.

When I commenced this diary of my life as a Confederate soldier I was full of hope for the speedy termination of the war, and our independence. I was not quite nineteen years old. I am now twenty-three. The four years that I have given to my country I do not regret, nor am I sorry for one day that I have given - my only regret is that we have lost that for which we fought. Nor do I for one moment think that we lost it by any other way than by being outnumbered at least five if not ten to one. The world was open to the enemy, but shut out to us. I shall now close this diary in sorrow, but to the last I will say that, although but a private, I still say our Cause was just, nor do I regret one thing that I have done to cripple the North.
---"
(DIARY OF A TAR HEEL CONFEDERATE SOLDIER: Electronic Edition by Louis Leon, ©1913, p. 70-71)

[IslamoLlama]

"-- My my, how Moe must twist logic into a knot to make her "feelings" appear correct. In her statement above we learn the following: --"

Which is fun if you twist my words around. Few of the confederate soldiers were slave-owners. They weren't fighting to "save slavery". They didn't own slaves. Likewise, few of the union soldiers were fighting to abolish slavery. Open rebellion and insurrection was reason enough for the upstart government to be put down.

Seek sees it. And he's not alone. The civil war was fought as a power battle between the Southern States and the Northern States, mostly over the newly acquired Western territory.

But again, this is all semantics. The point is that Dan wants to play revisionist historian, and when Congress keeps on throwing up reminders of the past - apologizes for racial abuses of the past, acknowledgment of crimes committed by the US Government, verbal condemnation of war criminals or civil rights abusers, MLK days and Black History Months, and the like - it throws a wrench in the wingnut narrative. So much harder to call poor people scum or peddle the inferiority/superiority meme when everyone keeps getting reminded about how pathetic and weasly the current power-holders are and how noble and strong the underdogs of American History had to be.

So much harder to vote Republican when you are aware of the whiny, bigoted, fascist slime that coats an otherwise noble set of principles.

[seekeronos]

The below quoted diarist was a Jewish store clerk, a private in the Confederate Army. I reckon he did not fight for the preservation of slavery, but more for the preservation of his state's right and the right of other states to end their union with a government that neither saw fit to longer honour her states' desires, nor serve its constitutional purpose, but rather to reign as a tyrannical hegemon compelling the obedience of her subjects at gunpoint.

[WAHOO WILLIE]

LLama this will remain a battle of semantics and we Americans will always prefer to create villians rather than face up to our shortcomings. This is why we don't ever mention northern slavery or racism in the north. It's why we made Custer a hero, rather than Crazy Horse and it's why The SpanAm war was because those mean Spaniards were being unfair to camposenos in Cuba....rather than imperialism.

It's all semantics and name calling wont change anything

[Fred Beloit]

Speaking of semantics, how did "slavery" become an "institution"? I'm not picking on Moe this time, it is a common phrase, "the institution of slavery"?

"tr.v., -tut·ed, -tut·ing, -tutes.

1. a. To establish, organize, and set in operation.
b. To initiate; begin. See synonyms at found1.
2. To establish or invest in an office or a position.

n., 1. a. Something instituted, especially an authoritative rule or precedent.
b. institutes A digest of the principles or rudiments of a particular subject, especially a legal abstract.
2. An organization founded to promote a cause: a cancer research institute.
3. a. An educational institution, especially one for the instruction of technical subjects.
b. The building or buildings housing such an institution.
4. A usually short, intensive workshop or seminar on a specific subject.

[Middle English instituten, from Latin īnstituere, īnstitūt-, to establish : in-, in; see in–2 + statuere, to set up.]"

It is such an unattractive thing, though a wide-spread and age-old one. One might prefer "the sin of slavery".

[seekeronos]

"--- n., 1. a. Something instituted, especially an authoritative rule or precedent. ---"

Slavery was most often instituted by the authority of a tribesman or tribesmen holding a captive at spearpoint or gunpoint at the direction of his tribal leadership, to be sold to either Arab or European slave traders, whose cultures had a long standing acceptance of slavery (being an "institution" founded upon a long standing precedents going back to the dawn of civilization as a means to treat war captives as captured chattels).

It is only in the 19th century and until present where society began to find slavery to be unacceptable.